Woman, 27, Trying to Live with Her ‘Glass Half Full’ After Cancer Diagnosis Shares ‘the Positives of Chemotherapy’ (Exclusive)

After a breast cancer diagnosis at 25, Alex Reddington shares how TikTok helped her find support, practical advice and humor during treatment.

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Alex Reddington turned to TikTok to share her breast cancer journey and found a supportive online community

She uses humor and parody skits to bring light to the cancer experience and connect with other patients

Reddington encourages young women to advocate for their health and find support through social media platforms

After her breast cancer diagnosis at 26, Alex Reddington wasn’t sure where to turn.

While doctors recommended a few charities and support groups for Reddington, she felt like there wasn’t “really a space for people in their 20s and 30s.”

“They sent me to [a group] that was teens and young adults and I was there and these were kids who were 15 or 16 with cancer, and then the other group was women in their 50s and 60s,” she tells PEOPLE. “They’re incredibly different experiences.”

Everything she read was either targeted toward younger people, such as how to deal with school through treatment, or people decades older than her, detailing ways to manage marriage or motherhood.

“I was stuck in the middle. There’s no pamphlet on how to date and those things for the 20s,” she emphasizes. “I had seen a few other people on TikTok before sharing their cancer experience, and it was a way for me to keep everyone updated as well.”

So, Reddington, who was diagnosed with grade 2 invasive ductal carcinoma that was estrogen- and progesterone-positive and HER2-negative, started posting updates about her cancer diagnosis on TikTok, noting that she is “terrible at texting people back” and thought it would be an easy way to keep friends and family in the loop.

However, she then started connecting with other women dealing with cancer, and they formed a community.

“Anytime any of us post on TikTok, we’re all in each other’s comments, and we’ve gone through treatment at the same time,” she says. “So TikTok for me was my charity in a sense. That was where I found my community, but also it was hell for me, and I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through it.”

Anytime Reddington was dealing with side effects or simply “feeling alone,” she found herself picking up her phone to ask, “Am I the only one going through this?”

“I would get so many comments from other people saying, ‘I’m in the exact same place right now.’ Before my double mastectomy, I got no advice from doctors and asked, ‘What do I need before surgery?’ The women on TikTok were like, ‘Buy yourself a pregnancy pillow.’ It was my saving grace,” she shares. “If it weren’t for TikTok, I wouldn’t have it.”

Reddington also hoped to use her page to spread awareness, noting that doctors had told her she was likely “too young” to have breast cancer, something she warns other women about.

Reddington says she “felt this obligation to share my experience so that other young women are regularly checking themselves because the earlier something is caught, the less treatment that’s needed, the easier treatment can be.”

The community and messages of support, she shares, “keep me posting.”

“The DMs and comments I would get from people... it kept me going for the longest time. It’s so lonely going through treatment,” she tells PEOPLE. “I had friends and family supporting me, but they have their own lives as well. TikTok was my outlet just to escape myself. I feel like it gave me a purpose when I didn’t have anything else.”

Despite the difficult experience, she notes that she also tries to post light-hearted content.

“I try to do parody skits and more comedy. When you look up cancer on social media, there’s a lot of tears and a lot of fear-mongering. Cancer is tragic, but I thought there needs to be some almost positive side to it,” she says. “I feel like I have an ability to make these comedy skits and make light of the fact of situations that happen to cancer patients and try to make other cancer patients laugh. When those people respond and say, ‘You’ve made me laugh today,’ it keeps me going, and it means the absolute world to me.”

She says that, while going through treatment, life can feel “so dark already,” and “you don’t want to surround yourself with even darker social media.”

In one of Reddington’s most viral videos, she listed “the positives of chemotherapy,” emphasizing that, not only did it kill the cancer, but it also meant she got to spend lots of time crafting and lost all her body hair, among other things.

“I felt, in a weird way, a calling to be like, ‘cancer can suck, but even when you’re bald, wigs can fit better,’” she jokes. “There is some glass half full of cancer. You don’t have to shave for months. You just become a dolphin naturally, and that was bliss.”

“Little things like that to try to give some hope to people where they might not be able to find it themselves,” Reddington, who is not in remission, adds. “I went through chemo in the summer, so I didn’t have to pay for a single wax. It was great.”

Despite Reddington’s optimistic attitude, she admits that some positives can be “hard to find.”

“I don’t always feel the positives. I think I’m probably better at the do as I say, not as I do,” she says. “But I’m like, ‘If I have this idea, I may as well share it and see what happens.’ ”

Her advice for people with cancer is to “get on social media” and find community they can relate to.

“Not even to post, but just look up some hashtags because there are so many people whose content is so fun and it just makes you feel like you’re not alone while going through something,” she shares, jokingly adding, “My recommendation is to up your screen time. When the world is telling us we’re on our phones too much, I say get on your phone more.”

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